NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will be more extreme than its famous predecessor in a variety of ways.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been studying the heavens from Earth for more than three decades, but the $10 billion Webb is more powerful and complex.
The new observatory will be going a long way out to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, about 1.5 million kilometers from our planet.
The James Webb Space Telescope is being built.
The same relative position can be maintained without much fuel at lagrange points. L2 isn't going to be used for propellant conservativism. It's going to stay cool.
We feel heat when we look at the universe in IR light. Hubble views are mainly in visible and ultraviolet wavelength. To pick up IR signals, the scientific instruments must be very cold. The observatory has a five-layer sun shield that is about the size of a tennis court.
If it's facing away from the sun, the sun shield won't be enough. That's where L2 comes in.
NASA officials wrote in an L2 explainer that the telescope can stay in line with the Earth as it moves around the sun.
The sun's heat and light can be harmful to the telescope, so the satellite's large sun shield protects it. The telescope will be out at the second lagrange point.
If everything goes according to plan, the instruments will operate at a temperature of minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit. On the telescope's hot side, where the solar panels, communications antenna and other non-scientific gear are located, the temperature will be around 185 degrees Fahrenheit (88 degrees C).
You could almost boil water on the hot side of the telescope, and freeze nitrogen on the cold side. NASA officials wrote.
The distance to L2 is a key difference between Hubble and Webb. Hubble was serviced by spacewalking astronauts five times between 1993 and 2009. The first mission was important because it fixed a flaw in Hubble's primary mirror that made the scope's initial images blurry.
It's too far to send astronauts, so the telescope will be on its own at L2.
The sun-Earth system has a diagram of the lagrange points. The WMAP Science Team is a part of NASA.
It will take about 30 days to get to its destination after launch. The telescope will begin an ambitious and varied observing campaign once it is ensconced around L2 and fully checked out. Some of the universe's first stars and the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets will be studied by the astronomer.
L2 won't be the first place to have a craft set up shop. The European Space Agency's Herschel space telescope, as well as the NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy probe, operated there.
A number of people have worked at Sun-Earth L1, which is 930,000 miles from Earth in the sunward direction. The Deep Space Climate Observatory is a joint project of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
There are five sun-Earth lagrange points. L3 is on the other side of the sun. L4 and L5 are 60 degrees ahead of Earth.
The story has been updated with the most recent launch date.
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